Sunday, March 3, 2013

Look closely enough and you'll see the Universe unfolding in every molecule, in every atom.

"Truth is fluid, truth is subjective."

What is truth, how can we define something to be 'true' or 'false'? A statement may apply almost every single time it is put to the test, but it only takes a single failure to prove it to be false. This is one of the reasons the Bible has been so popular - it is neither provably correct nor incorrect. Sure you might think Noah's Ark is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is pretty difficult to prove a flood did not happen or that there was a huge boat with lots of animals. The tower of Babel was a tower that would reach the skies, and it was not struck down by anyone. However, reaching the skies does not necessarily mean it was infinitely tall, it just meant that there was an image of the stars on top of the tower, symbolizing the sky. This sort of towers have been uncovered, which means that the tower of Babel is not provably false. Common sense dictates that the boat probably didn't house 2 specimens of each species in the world that would then lead the world to a massive case of incest, but then again, books are usually not meant to be taken literally. This causes further difficulties differentiating between 'truth', 'fiction', and 'lie'.

Scientific theories are generally thought of as 'true' once they have been proven to have sufficient basis. Newton's laws, while basic from current viewpoints, do in general apply. Once someone starts looking into quantum physics, one finds that some 'true' Newton's laws do not work. And yet, those laws are not considered false, they are considered incomplete. String theory is currently considered to be 'true' because it explains physics from Newtonian principles to modern discoveries, as long as we have 11 dimensions. It is 'true' because it makes sense, but until we actually see or detect the strings, it is not 'true' for certain. It is neither provably correct nor incorrect, until we find a method that shows us the individual strings and we understand how each string works individually and as a part of the world, or we find a method that shows us there is no such string. We don't know it to be 'true', we believe it to be. And some of us believe it isn't.

It is human nature to pick at things until we find something we do not understand. It is what drives scientific discovery, it pushes the boundaries of human limits. To claim a statement to be 'true' is to not observe it closely enough. To claim a statement to be 'false' is to find a single case where the statement does not apply. Some statements linger in between, true enough to be believable, false enough to be incomplete. The world is more than yin and yang, it is a mix between the two.


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